BANGOR – An effort to outlaw slot machines in Maine could be delayed until 2006, according to organizers of the petition drive to place the matter on the statewide ballot.

Officials with No Slots for ME!, a Westbrook-based group seeking to overturn a law allowing slots at Bangor Raceway on Monday downplayed the likelihood of an earlier vote as originally intended.

Group officials estimate they have collected only about half the 50,519 signatures needed to place the matter back before voters, making it difficult to gather the rest by the Jan. 20, 2005, deadline to qualify for the November 2005 ballot.

“It’s a job that needs doing, but it seems like it’s going to be harder than we thought,” said Doug Muir, a member of the group’s steering committee.

Muir’s group has set its sights on derailing a Pennsylvania-based company’s plan to place 1,500 slots at the Bangor harness racing track. Penn National Gaming, which already holds a conditional license to run the slots, plans to have its $75 million facility up and running at Bass Park in 2006.

“We’re hoping to do this without the continued threat of this small group of anti-gaming individuals,” said Penn spokesman Eric Schippers, when learning of the expected delay. “But it’s not going to alter our plans to move forward with this tremendous project.”

The anti-gambling group had concentrated its signature gathering efforts at the polls in southern Maine – particularly Cumberland and York counties – where opposition to casino-style gambling is strongest.

Stephen Whiting, a Portland attorney coordinating the petition drive for No Slots for ME!, said the group would continue its efforts despite its fading chances of making next year’s ballot.

“It looks like we’re going to have to go to churches to get the rest [of the signatures],” Whiting said, acknowledging the group had now set its sights on an Oct. 4, 2005, deadline to qualify for the November 2006 ballot.

No Slots for ME! apparently was not the only organization having difficulty gathering petition signatures at the polls this past Election Day, and record turnout didn’t compensate for voters’ “referendum fatigue,” according to University of Maine political analyst Amy Fried.

“It doesn’t mean people are necessarily opposed to the measure,” Fried said. “It just means they don’t see it as a problem at this point.”

In the case of casino gambling, however, Muir said he saw significant social and economic problems arising from the Bangor slots parlor and vowed to do “whatever it takes” to ban what some studies suggest is a highly addictive form of gambling.

While soundly defeating a plan to open an Indian casino in southern Maine in 2003, voters approved slots at Bangor Raceway, the only eligible site under the law.

Muir acknowledged an expected delay in the group’s repeal effort could complicate its effort to head off the Bangor project. He said he hoped the Legislature would not renew Penn’s license if the repeal was successful in 2006.

To counter the No Slots for ME! referendum, members of the Maine harness racing community proposed their own citizen initiative in October designed to protect the Bangor facility.

Denise McNitt, a spokesman for the harness racing association, said it did not circulate petitions at the polls on Election Day, instead opting to see how the opposing measure fared. McNitt said she wasn’t surprised by the anti-gambling group’s apparent difficulty collecting signatures.

“It’s pretty clear even the people who don’t want [slots] don’t want to go through this again,” McNitt said, dismissing the opposition’s argument that the matter did not get a fair hearing in 2003. “The voters have already decided.”